


6

by Thomas_Fooll



Series: Numbers (Joshler) [4]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Also Teen Angst, Flowers, M/M, Poetry in there too, Post-Break Up, Pyromania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 14:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20909255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thomas_Fooll/pseuds/Thomas_Fooll
Summary: AU, where they are six feet apart. Six feet that cancel all of your previous habits.Just forget everything that you knew already.





	6

**Author's Note:**

> This is a translation from Russian. You can read the original work here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/6061187

Six feet away Tyler's eyes get all smoked up and fright fills his lungs without any obvious reason. Josh Dun has in his hands:

\- a handful of white chamomiles;  
\- a canister;  
\- a box of matches.

(Why chamomiles, Tyler hates them so much).

Six feet away everything suddenly cuts off- just six feet, but the emotion is as strong as though it's six inches (or even less). This is Josh Dun with his red beanies and coloured hair, and Josh Dun crumples his perception with this bright yellow canister and chamomiles.

Red and yellow are so beautiful together, Tyler is both baffled and horrified.

Six feet- it's insane, but he had a dream like that literally the day before. He never felt like that, yeah.

\- - -

This part of Columbus is always quiet and breezy at night, Josh smashes his window open, and the wind is whispering, messing with willow leaves in the back garden. Josh Dun reads aloud Faulkner, Poe, Brodsky. Empty, buzzing from the lonely voice darkness of this night swirls around in Tyler's intestines, clogging his ears, and this is all much like some delusion, and Isaaс Asimov's works huddle beside Marvel's Zombie-universe anthology, being forgotten about for a long couple of days. Josh Dun's voice - a neon-green miracle, calming and exciting simultaneously, making Tyler flinch from tingling sensation somewhere in the very centre of his chest.

Josh Dun reads Confucius aloud and this is one of the best performances Tyler has ever seen and heard. Stuffy air of the room is swirled around by the warm May wind, and lips are all sore from all the biting. Everything is surreal, everything is hollow, everything bears a thin fragrance of oregano and calendula in itself, especially the latter, yeah.

Tyler likes calendula, it's just like chamomiles, but not claiming to be _innocent_ or _clean_.

Josh Dun smells of oregano, St. John's wort and coriander - Tyler remembers the quatrain from Whitman that he recited on the flyleaf of the graphic novel he gifted Josh for his birthday last summer:

_'I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,_  
_If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles'_

Josh Dun's favourite _grass,_ surprisingly, has no smell, nor is it defined by having some interesting colour, and this is so unnatural, that Tyler sometimes imagines that Josh he knows is not _the_ Josh, but a collection of aromas and cold-blooded thoughts, changing people the way he does clothes. Behind all of that Josh he knows has favourite _grass-_ the one without smell- and favourite artpieces- the ones without colour. Not the way you would think it works.

Not the way you would think it works, but it just so happens that six inches in between them is so far, that irritation bubbles somewhere inside, and this all is there just because playing the guitar requires bending all over it, but his lips are all tingling in anticipation of the other boy's touch, so cliché and simple, yeah.

Everything bears a thin fragrance of calendula and cornflower, of oregano and summer ocean breeze, and where could it possibly come from in the City, that is hopelessly trapped in the centre of the continent is a million-dollar question. Josh Dun chants the quotes of the famous pyromaniacs and Tyler somehow doesn't consider it being odd or suspicious at that moment.

\- - -

Six feet is an astonishing breaking point, refreshing breath of danger, wet drops of fire to his face. Six feet is enough to:

say your farewells to your life;  
say 'no' to yourself;  
regret the things you have missed;  
praise the things you got to experience.

As though there's some kind of achievement for leaving this world not being a virgin, huh. As though it's some kind of honour to be killed by your first love interest.

Six feet away Tyler Joseph stares into Josh Dun's face, and there's nothing except for those lifeless chamomiles, colourless drawings and odourless _grass_. Innocent void. He doesn't understand, he doesn't know, he doesn't see it, like some sort of your common fool, that doesn't know how to interact with people, incapable even of recognising himself in the muddy blend of his delusions and fictions that, frankly, just become another barrier in his way.

Six feet - and now is the perfect time to quit, give up and let go of everything, making it easier to breathe, but.

Six feet - and you see your mistakes, when and where you should have (not) reacted so that it all would not result in this burning car and, well, handful of chamomiles squeezed in the hands, trembling in anticipation. The only thing is, time is a one way road, and there's no going back, no, not here, not now, and there's nothing to fix already, and the only things left are six feet, a handful of chamomiles, regret, fear, death and the other's insanity. Innocent void in the eyes and the fragrant air, swirling around all by itself, and the odour is neither floral, nor herbal. Gasoline drips down from the canister, spreading around as a big puddle- look out man, it's going to light up, and then there will be nothing except for pain. Only pain, huh, as if he is not used to it.

As if he is not used to.

Six feet cancel all of your previous habits, just forget everything that you knew already.

\- - -

_So that's the reason the twilight lingers. Evening's habitually cast_  
_In the guise of a railway square, a statue's form, and all that jazz,_  
_where a gaze in which is read "So damn and blast_  
_You" is directly in proportion to the absent mass. _© Brodsky

Josh Dun always loses when they play _'Never have I ever'_, leaving behind all sorts of dares that lower his chances of ever winning again. Tyler is suffocated by the darkness of the night, and the only reminder that this is the end of October is the freezing-cold air, wrapping around his feet. Josh Dun smiles and bites the tip of his tongue, and Debby Ryan fawns to him just like those puppies in the streets always do, the room smells of the cold air and snow, exhausts of the pimped cars roaming around the suburbs, rotten wood and worms.

And, of course, of chamomiles.  
Tyler hates chamomiles.

Tyler says something like: "Never have I ever thought of lighting people who are close to me on fire", and Joshua William Dun loses again, but no one is bothered all that much. At least not now.

Gray-toned outside world illuminates the windows with warm yellow tint of street lights, piercing through the darkness, and the room is all stuffy and warm, too, and Tyler in this skeleton costume, and Josh is- would you even believe that?!- a poppy. Everything smells of alcohol and valerian, of motherwort and- just the smallest bit- burning absinth.

This night is the loneliest one out of these three months, Tyler's hands are itchy, and so is his neck, but he manages to fall asleep, convincing himself that it will get easier in the morning. He mutters under his breath exactly fifteen times:

damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you

damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you

damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you  
damn and blast you

And it somehow indeed _does_ get better.

In the morning Debby Ryan is glowing with happiness like a satisfied whore would and constantly looks at Josh Dun with a gaze that reads: "I'm in love". Josh glances at Tyler, blinks, frowns, looks away.

Josh's favourite _grass_ does not smell, Josh's favourite artpieces don't evoke feelings, Josh's favourite person is just another dummy. Josh buys her chamomiles when three of them go home- just because it's the same way for all of them- and Tyler would swear on his life that he's about to vomit his guts out because of this combination, that continues to haunt him wherever he goes.

Innocent void.  
Void.

So stupid.

\- - -

Six feet is just above his height. Tyler reaches forward for Josh. That's not just a whim, but a desire to touch a person that he has repressed a long time ago, that's what that is. The air around is soaked with the smell of gasoline, everything in the air is trembling and crying with fire once again - the car's oil filter flares up behind Josh.

Josh has in his hands chamomiles- why, Tyler hates chamomiles so much- and they are on fire, too, like this bloody calendula.

Six feet- and Josh pulls out a flower, blows out the flame like it's some sort of a candle. His hair is red and green still, like a rem(a)inder of this Halloween. Tyler stares at the car, then at Josh, then at the flower in a hot dark hand.

Cold and stuffy.  
Breaking him in half.

Tyler stares at Josh, right into his blackest eyes, glistering with the maniacal flares of ginger flames. Tyler stares and says: "Damn and blast you". Even though his mum would say that's wrong. Josh Dun holds up a flower, turns around to face the fire. Somewhere in it there's a body of Debby Ryan, melting and crumbling down like a candle. They are five feet apart.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of Brodsky's poem was found in "Returning the Ticket: Joseph Brodsky's 'August' and the End of the Petersburg Text?" by Andrew Reynolds in Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Summer, 2005).  
You can read the article here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3649986.  
(Yes, I do my research, my guys).


End file.
